This morning I woke to delicious news:
Cochise County, where Republican Congressional District 2 candidate Martha McSally made her strongest showing, finished counting its last votes Wednesday.
But when the totals were posted, McSally still trailed incumbent Democrat Ron Barber by 654 votes.
However the AZ Daily Star says:
With more than 25,000 provisional ballots remaining in Pima County, however, the race is still too close to call.
Too close? hahahahaha. Without a miracle, not too close.. But simply
on track with previous predictions
I now am 99% sure that (unless there is some kind of catastrophe, like the Pima County elections office catching fire.) Barber will win. Why? Barber Leads by 12% in provisionals counted in Pima, and by 7.5% in Early Ballots. He should win by about 1500 votes when all is counted.
follow me after the curly orange symbol of reality-based math...
The Background:
McSally is only in contention in this race due to her extremely strong showing in Cochise County, which is mostly Rural, Retirees and Army base. In Cochise County Romney led Obama by about 25%!
However Cochise only represents a little less than 1/4 of the votes in this race. The rest of the votes come from my fair county, (Pima) which contains Tucson, home to the University of Arizona. Pima is a larger and more heterogenous county, with dark blue precincts in which Barber led McSally 3-1, and others which strongly lean Republican. However, overall it is more balanced, with a Democratic lean. (Obama beat Romney by 6 points in Pima).
The Math
Facts
a) Barber leads McSally by
654 votes
b) No remaining votes to count in Cochise County
c) 25,000 provisional ballots in Pima to count
d) Barber leads in provisionals counted 211 - 164 and in Early voting 90,500 - 77,800
Assumptions
a) 80% of remaining provisionals will be counted
b) 60% of remaining provisionals from Pima are in CD-2
c) 4% undervote
d) Barber will continue to lead in the uncounted ballots by a similar margin to the counted provisionals and Early Ballots.
Barber's current margin (Pima Co.)
211-164 = 47 ; 47/ 375 =
12 % Barber margin provisionals
90,500 - 77,800 = 12,700 ; 12,700/ 168,300
7.5% Barber margin early votes
To be more conservative, I will take the 7.5% number for Barber's predicted vote margin for remaining provisionals. Since the number of provisionals counted already is so so small... See my other diary as to my reasoning. on this.
The Final Result
25,000 * .8 = 20,000# of provisionals to be counted as votes
* .6 = 12,000# of counted provisionals in CD 2
* .075 = 900 Barber additional margin of votes from these ballots
652 + 900 = 1552 - predicted vote margin by which Barber will win CD-2
This is out of recount territory, since AZ law only stipulates recount in races closer than .1 % of total votes in the race!!
GO BARBER!!!